J Ward - Crave

The second shot went off exactly as the first had: loud sound, slug in the wall, Jim still standing.

“-different result,” he finished.

Matthias’s hand shot out and grabbed onto Jim’s leather jacket. As the cane dropped on the floor and bounced, Jim smiled, thinking this shit was better than Christmas.

“You want to shoot me again?” he asked. “Or are we going to talk about Isaac?”

“What are you.”

Jim grinned like a crazy motherfucker. “I’m your worst nightmare. Someone you can’t touch and you can’t control and you can’t kill.”

Matthias slowly shook his head back and forth. “This isn’t right.”

“Isaac Rothe. You’re going to let him go.”

“This doesn’t…” Matthias used Jim’s jacket as a counterbalance while he shifted to the side and looked at the wall that had been cosmetically wounded. “It isn’t right.”

Jim gripped that fist and squeezed hard, feeling the bones compress. “Do you remember what you always tell people?”

Matthias’s eye flipped back to Jim’s face. “What. Are. You.”

Jim jerked the two of them together so their noses were an inch apart. “You always tell people there’s no one you can’t take, nowhere you can’t find them, nothing you won’t do to them. Well, that would be a right-back-at-you. Let Isaac go and I won’t make your life a living hell.”

Matthias stared hard into his eyes, probing, seeking information. God, this was a head trip in a good way. For once, the man who had all the answers was off his game and floundering.

Christ, if Jim was still alive, he’d take a picture of that puss and make a calendar of the damn thing.

Matthias rubbed the eye that was visible, like he was hoping what vision he had left would clear and he’d find himself alone-or at least the only person standing in the embalming room.

“What are you?” he whispered.

“I’m an angel sent from Heaven, buddy.” Jim laughed low and hard. “Or maybe I’m the conscience you were born without. Or maybe I’m a hallucination from all the prescription meds you need to control your pain. Or maybe this is just a dream. But whatever the case, there is only one truth you need to know-I’m not letting you take Isaac. That’s not going to happen.”

The two held eyes and stayed that way as Matthias’s brain clearly churned.

After a long moment, the man apparently decided to go with what was in front of him. After all, what was it that Sherlock Holmes had said? When you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

Therefore, he clearly concluded that Jim was some flavor of alive: “Why is Isaac Rothe so important to you?”

Jim released the grip on his old boss. “Because he is me.”

“Just how many more of ‘you’ are out there? We’ve got this thing on the slab-”

“Isaac wants out. And you’re going to let him go.”

There was a long silence. And then Matthias’s voice changed, growing softer and grimmer. “That soldier is full of state secrets, Jim. The knowledge he’s accumulated is worth a shitload to our enemies. So, news flash, it’s really not a case of what you or he wants. It’s what is best for us-and before you go all bleeding-heart indignant on my ass, the ‘us’ is not you and me, or XOps. It’s the fucking country.”

Jim rolled his eyes. “Yeah, right. And I’ll bet all that patriotic bullshit gives Uncle Sam a hard-on. But it doesn’t do shit for me. The bottom line is… if you were in the civilian population, you’d be a serial killer. Working for the government means you get to wave the American flag around when it suits you, but the truth is, you do what you do because you enjoy picking the wings off of flies. And everybody’s an insect in your eyes.”

“My proclivities don’t change a thing.”

“And because of them, you serve no one but yourself.” Jim brushed at the pair of burn marks on the front of his shirt. “You’ve taken XOps over as your own personal death factory, and if you’re smart, you’ll duck out yourself before some of these ‘special assignments’ come back to bite you on the ass.”

“I thought you were here to talk about Isaac.”

Little too close to a nerve, huh? “Fine. He’s smart, so he can keep himself out of enemy hands, and he’s got no incentive to turn.”

“He’s alone. He has no money. And people get desperate quick.”

“Fuck that-he’s got a sterling record and he’s going to disappear.”

The corner of Matthias’s mouth inched up. “And how would you know that. Oh, wait, you’ve already found him, haven’t you.”

“You can let him go. You have the power to do this-”

“No, I don’t!”

The explosion was a surprise, and as the words faded in the same way the gunshots had, Jim found himself looking around the room for verification that he’d heard that right. Matthias was all-powerful. Always had been. And not just in his own eyes.

Hell, the bastard had enough clout to turn the Oval Office into a mausoleum.

Now Matthias was the one leaning in over the corpse. “I don’t give a fuck what you think about me or how your inner Oprah has spun this whole situation. It is not about what I want… It’s what I’m compelled to do.”

“Innocent people have died.”

“So that the corrupt could! Christ, Jim, this whaaawhaaa bullshit coming from you is ridiculous. Good people die every day and you can’t stop it. I’m just a different kind of bus mowing them down-and at least I have a larger purpose.”

Jim felt a wave of anger crest-but then as he thought about it all, the emotion ebbed into something else. Sadness, maybe.

“I should have let you die in that desert.”

“Which is what I asked you to do.” Matthias grabbed onto his own left arm again and dug in, like he’d just been sucker punched in the pit. “You should have followed the orders I gave to leave me there.”

So hollow, Jim thought. The words were so hollow and dead. As if they were about someone else entirely.

“Compelled,” indeed. The guy had wanted to get out so much he’d been willing to kill himself to do it. But Devina had pulled him back in; Jim was sure of it. That demon and her thousand faces and her countless lies were at work here. Had to be. And hadn’t her manipulations set the scene perfectly for the battle over Isaac: that solider had done evil, but was trying to start over, and this was his crossroads, this tug-of-war between Jim and Matthias over his what-next.

Jim shook his head. “I’m not going to let you take Isaac Rothe’s life. I can’t. You say you work with a purpose-so do I. You kill that man and humanity’s lost more than an innocent.”

“Oh, come on. He is not innocent. His hands drip with blood just like yours and mine. I don’t know what’s happened to you, but don’t romanticize the past. You know exactly what he’s guilty of.”

Pictures of dead men flashed in front of Jim’s eyes: stab wounds, gunshots, leaky faces and crumpled bodies. And those were just the messy jobs. The stiffs who’d been asphyxiated or gassed or poisoned had just been gray and gone.

“Isaac wants out. He wants to stop. His soul is desperate for a different way and I’m going to get him there.”

Matthias winced and went back to rubbing his left arm. “Want in one hand, shit in the other-see what you get the most of.”

“I’ll kill you,” Jim said simply. “If it comes down to it-I’ll kill you.”

“Well, what do you know… there’s a news flash. To quote yourself, do it now.”

Jim slowly shook his head again. “Unlike you, I don’t pull the trigger unless I have to.”

“Sometimes getting a jump on the showdown is the smartest move, Jimmy.”